About A.1355S/S.2963
New Jersey should be applauded for its law (A.1355/S.2963 January, 2016) requiring hospitals and birthing facilities to provide new parents information about crib safety. Also, many thanks to our myriad supporters in helping to get this new law passed. None of our work gets done without you.
Current law requires that when a new baby is born, parents are required by doctors and other hospital personnel, to be certain that the baby has a car safety seat to be put in before they can be discharged from the hospital. This is great legislation, which ensures the babies’ first travel out of the hospital will be safe.
Your Baby’s Crib
However, once the baby is home, the safest place for the baby to sleep is in his/her own crib. All cribs must meet the new 2012 crib safety standards. All cribs manufactured before that date should not be bought, sold or used. Drop-side cribs are banned. Please check the crib regularly for loose or missing parts and only use the manufacturers’ recommended parts. Bare is best in the crib. Remove all soft items from the crib including bumpers, pillows, blankets, comforters and toys. Always place your baby to sleep on his/her back.
At Keeping Babies Safe, we feel that knowledge is the most important factor in keeping babies safe. The crib is the only place we leave our babies unattended. New Jersey requires hospitals and birthing facilities to provide parents with crib safety information, product recalls, federal standards on manufacture and sale of cribs and information from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission. New Jersey families will now be knowledgeable about safe sleep practices and how to keep babies safe in cribs, bassinets and play yards. Keeping Babies Safe, along with the American Academy of Pediatricians and the Consumer Product Safety Commission released a DVD entitled “Safe Sleep for Babies” that goes over all of the critical safe sleep facts and airs on the Newborn Channel in over 1,200 Hospitals Nationwide.
Working together we can accomplish so much more.